It is very interesting that the Muslims are demanding Spanish citizenship comes after the recent approval of a law that would grant Spanish citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492.
Muslim supporters say they are entitled to the same rights and privileges as Jews because both groups were expelled from Spain under similar historical circumstances.
The difference is that very few descendants of Sephardic Jews subjected to the horrors of the Inquisition and expelled in 1492 will be taking up any Spanish citizenship. Ever since they've been expelled it has been forbidden for Jews to take up residency in Spain based on rabbinic decree.
But historians point out that the Jewish presence in Spain predates the arrival of Christianity in the country and that their expulsion was a matter of bigotry. By contrast, the Muslims in Spain were colonial occupiers who called the territory Al-Andalus and imposed Arabic as the official language. Historians say their expulsion was a matter of decolonization.
But, with the Muslims, it's please, my mind is made up, please don't confuse me with the facts.
“The difference is that very few descendants of Sephardic Jews subjected to the horrors of the Inquisition and expelled in 1492 will be taking up any Spanish citizenship. Ever since they’ve been expelled it has been forbidden for Jews to take up residency in Spain based on rabbinic decree.“
Quite an ignorant statement, only Catholics, or those converted to the Catholic faith, were judged by the Tribunal of the Inquisition, neither Jews nor Muslims were under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.
Jews forbidden to take residence in Spain?... Absolutely ridiculous, during the Holocaust and with 20 German divisions on the frontier with France threatening to enter in Spain to take over the Peñón Gibraltar to control the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, Franco cognized as Spanish citizens all the descendants of the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. Franco also founded in Barcelona an Institute of Hebraic Studies.
Thanks to Franco more than 60,000 Jews saved their lives receiving refuge in Spain regardless if they were Sephardic or Ashkenazi Jews, a fact that was recognized by the American Sephardic Jews.
I am sure that those Jews were extremely happy to be back in their beloved “Sepharad”.
FRANCISCO FRANCO, BENEFACTOR OF THE JEWS:
However general history may judge him, in Jewish history, Franco shall certainly occupy a special place... Jews should honor and bless the memory of this great benefactor of the Jewish people...who neither sought nor reaped any benefit from what he did.
—From a four page obituary in The American Sephardic Journal of the Sephardic Studies Program of Yeshiva University, volume IX, 1978.
James Michener in Iberia, 1968, page 547: “...Generalissimo Franco is highly regarded by Jews; during the worst days of World War II, when pressures from Hitler were at their heaviest, Franco refused to issue anti-Jewish edicts and instead provided a sanctuary, never violated, for Jews who managed to make it to Spain. Many thousands of Jews owe their lives to Franco, and this is not forgotten.”
In Resolutions of the War Emergency Conference of the World Jewish Congress, Atlantic City, New Jersey, November 26-30, 1944, page 15: “The War Emergency Conference extends its gratitude to the Holy See and to the Governments of Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain... for the protection they offered under difficult conditions to the persecuted Jews of Hungary...”
In the Congressional Record of January 24, 1950, Rep. Abraham Multer quotes a spokesman for the Joint Distribution Committee: “During the height of Hitler’s blood baths, upwards of 60,000 Jews had been saved by the generosity of Spanish authorities.”
Newsweek, March 2, 1970: “...a respected U.S. rabbi has come forward with surprising evidence that tens of thousands of Jews were saved from Nazi ovens by the personal intervention of an unlikely protector.”I have absolute proof that Franco saved more than 60,000 Jews during World War II,” says Rabbi Chain Lipscitz of Brooklyn’s Torah Vodaath and Mesitva rabbinical seminary.
In the context of the Holocaust, truth should prevail over myth, prejudices or bigotry. It is a fact recognized by the founders of the State of Israel that thanks to the Catholic Church, and by order of Pope Pius XII, more than 800,000 Jews were saved from the Nazis in the occupied Europe. That was in stark contrast to the action of the Allies, England close the door of Palestine to the Jews trying to flee occupied Europe and Franklin Delano Roosevelt also closed the door to the Jews, and less than 10,000 Jews were given refuge in the United States.
